Netsurfing in a Dhar village
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COMMENTS 
An intranet network brings the administration closer to village India.
On December 2, 2000, in a small town called Sardarpur in Madhya Pradesh, ten people requested market rates for agricultural produce. These rates were downloaded from an intranet for Rs 5 a piece by Mukesh Mukati, the young entrepreneur who mans the village panchayat's computer kiosk. Mukati also processed three complaints to the district administration (at Rs 10 each), four requests for various kinds of certificates (Rs 10), two online classified ads (Rs 10), and three matrimonial ads (Rs 10). Although his records don't reflect it, he also charges customers a rupee to scan these ads. In addition to these offline services, he made money writing and printing letters, applications and resumes, as well as other basic desktop publishing services. And then he made some more money teaching local youths about the computer, the keyboard, the mouse, the Windows environment, and so forth (Rs 15 per hour). He can even produce astrological charts and forecasts from his computer for Rs.50. By the close of business, Mukati had made Rs 350. Not bad for an entrepreneur in a small town.
Mukati is one of 31 entrepreneurs connected through the Gyandoot network, a project initiated by Rajesh Rajoura and Amit Aggarwal, district collector and additional collector respectively, of Dhar district, Madhya Pradesh. The two civil servants began planning the project by identifying village panchayats that already had telephone connections. They then held meetings with panchayat members, young educated persons, and other opinion-makers in each village, seeking to create a menu of services that would directly benefit rural citizens. Nitesh Vyas, who now co-ordinates the Gyandoot initiative, is busy expanding the educational resources available at the kiosks or soochanalayas. He is also overseeing the switchover from their urrent dial-up technology to a wireless-in-local-loop system that would allow them to set up a kiosk in every village within a 25-kilometre radius.
Each centre provides services to 15 gram panchayats and 25-30 villages. The benefits reach over half a million people in more than 600 villages.
The Gyandoot Project is important for two reasons: first, it has demonstrated that an economic logic can function at rural computer centres, and second, it has developed a menu of e-commerce and e-governance services that is of real benefit for rural citizen-consumers. The soochnalayas have begun to eliminate middlemen and are introducing a positive restrain on corruption at the local, village level. The networking is also prodding slothful taluka administrations to become more accountable. Since Gyandoot kicked off a little over a year ago, over 60,000 e-mail complaints have poured into the central server of the district administration at Dhar.
All future attempts to provide e-nabled access and benefits to rural communities must now benchmark themselves against the standards set by this project.
Gyandoot, launched in January 2000, won the Stockholm Challenge Award for public service and democracy. It was chosen for the award from 109 projects across the world. By the end of June, Dhar will have 80 cyberkiosks. Emulating the Gyandoot example, six cyberkiosks supplying essential information have opened in nearby Rathlam district.
For more information visit the Gyandoot website: www.gyandoot.net
Contact: Tel:91-7292-33232
Fax 091-7292-227 22
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